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20:26
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Originally posted by eastwest101:
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The only negatives are that a lot of the vein mineralization is extremely skinny in the region of only 0.5 to 1m in true width, although the grades are extraordinarily high small skinny vein deposits are difficult to mine with modern equipment, and resource estimates subject to larger errors, especially when parts of the deposit has been mined out with voids and backfilled stopes of various grades making the mining sequence complex and time-consuming. Underground mining usually has a minimum mining width of 5m and open pit mining has void issues, both also have their own trade-offs with larger more efficient open pit mining being bigger but more waste to move, and in either underground or open-pit scenarios, the larger more modern equipment makes selective mining more difficult to do, and hence more dilution.
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Yep, all good points. Seems that the backfill material is reasonably high grade by today's standards. Possible that the mineralisation runs out into a larger resources but it's tough to say at this point because there's not a lot of alteration in the width of the veins between that 0.5-1m-ish range.
